Hi Sara!
I love your work too! So, I don't have any formal training in design, I have more formal training in interaction design (in a way) because I took animation classes in college. Though that was more about the history of animation and cel animation than it was computer animation.
I have both my bachelor's and my master's degrees in fine art and I was a college professor for art for four years in the Greek Islands.
Art and design, though similar, are not the same at all, so I would say the things I worked on before have some impact on how I design a thing but I would still not call myself a designer. I have been doing web development for about 15 years so I feel more comfortable saying I'm a web developer even though I don't have formal training in that, either :)